Environmental Justice (EJ) Program and Resources

Environmental justice is rooted in the philosophy that all peoples have an equal right to clean air, water, and land. Environmental justice is forwarded by working with off-road tribes and their communities that, due to a number of reasons, have unlined landfills that present a number of contamination risks. With no safe place to discard hazardous waste, the subsistence resources on which these communities depend are threatened.

In December 2018. the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded Zender Environmental Health and Research Group an Environmental Justice (EJ) Collaborative Problem Solving Grant to help address this issue. Zender Environmental administers the Backhaul Alaska Program on behalf of the Solid Waste Alaska Taskforce (SWAT). Backhaul Alaska is a statewide coordinated system to remove these hazardous wastes, relying on and bolstering the ground-built capacity of the local communities. This EPA grant helps SWAT establish partnerships and develop the Backhaul Alaska program in a manner that best works for the people it serves. The advice of participating tribes and local communities is sought, and compensated for, in configuring all aspects of the program.

For more information or questions about this program, contact:
Simone Sebalo, ssebalo@zendergroup.org  907 277 2111

For more information:

www.backhaulalaska.org
https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/environmental-justice-grants#alaska
https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-10/documents/2018_project_descriptions_0.pdf

For information about our 2011 EJ program, click here.